In issue 135 of PC Plus I'll be reviewing the Fuji DX-5 digital camera, a new entrant in the UK market at the bargain-basement price of £280. Here are some sample photos, shrunk from their original 640 X 480 resolution but otherwise unretouched.
Some shots have a strangely misty look to them. The overall effect is often as if they've been taken through a high-quality lens fitted with a soft-focus filter. However the DX-5 is outstandingly good (for a digital camera) at resolving subtle variations in colour and shade.
There's no white balance control for adjusting to artificial light, although this indoor shot came out fine. Note the good resolution of the word 'Convertible' - reproducing legible text is a key test of a digital camera.
Under domestic lighting (i.e. a couple of 100w tungsten bulbs) things come out very yellow indeed unless you use the flash (right). This makes the flash essential for colour fidelity as well as lighting.
If you get the lighting right (or nature does it for you), then colour resolution really is excellent. Overall the Fuji gives more 'photographic' (i.e. less video-like) results than many digital cameras.
On the minus side, the Fuji's JPEG compression is a bit error-prone when dealing with complex images. This clip is enlarged to twice its original size (although the errors are visible at original size), and the red-ringed areas (plus others) show where the camera has got its maths wrong. Curved areas with complex shadow patterns seem to give it the worst problems, which is a shame as that's what human faces largely consist of.
This picture emphasises the 'photographic' nature of the Fuji DX-5. Whereas the Sony DSC-F1, for example, takes low-light pictures with a relatively fast shutter speed by relying on its CCD imaging chip's sensitivity, the Fuji slows the shutter right down in low light, giving a behaviour similar to that of a conventional film camera.
My verdict on the FujiFilm DX-5? Great value for money, but you'll need to read the review in PC Plus next month to get all the details!